She didn’t dare disobey. In fact, she hurried up to be even faster. The upstairs resembled the rest of the house. Everything was ornate and also slightly orange thanks to the light. He banged open a door, and she followed him inside. It was a bedroom. Inside a king sized bed dominated the space, covered with fluffy white bedding. Everything else in the room seemed to have been crafted from the same dark wood.
“This room temporarily belonged to a woman of my acquaintance. She lived here ten years ago. Briefly. I did not know her well. But, her son became…ill and injured her. She didn’t have much time left to live, so I took her in. When she died, I should have gotten rid of her stuff. Alas, I have little interest in the mundane. All of her clothes are here. You may fit in some of them, as you are roughly the same size. She weighed more than you. Never mind. You’ll make it work. You have no choice.” He pointed toward the closet and then stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him. “Don’t worry about giving them back. They belong to no one. Keep it.”
Essence tried to breathe. She had a lot of questions. Why had assumed someone named was the person who attacked her on the street? With no other choice, she bent over to put her head between her knees. The partners would never send her somewhere unsafe. This man was odd. That was all. It was an old building, and she read too many books. Her imagination was ridiculous.
He’d seen her outside. Maybe he even had a security system. Okay, that makes sense.
Then he’d shoved her in a dead woman’s room. “Well, clothes aren’t haunted, you silly woman.”
Sometimes talking to herself worked and sometimes it didn’t. Anxiety-ridden or not, she had a job to do, and if she didn’t hurry up, she was going to miss her train home. She flung open the closet. He was right. She had no choice. She’d make it work.
Somehow.
*
Constantia, why did you leave me?
He hadn’t seen his love in one hundred years. On this date, one hundred years earlier, he’d failed her. The hunters had killed his love, drove a stake through her heart, cut off her head then burned her for good measure. Alec closed his eyes. Of course, he’d shown those men what a monster really looked like. They’d seen his vampire eyes and the fangs that went with him.
Every year since, he signed papers that kept the trust—which he’d established years ago for her descendants wealthy—legal for another year. To keep the money tax-exempt, he had to keep re-upping the signatures. It drove him crazy to have to keep signing, year after year. Millions and millions of dollars…
Yet, this year he’d forgotten about it entirely.
Had he finally become the monster he’d always feared he would become?
This dark night—Constantia, I have failed you.
Once again, he had a woman in his house who was not his love, and he would have to figure out what he’d do with her. As a rule, he never fed on women. Ever. Even in the days before he’d become blood-selective—a term he lived by, thanks to the strong intervention two centuries earlier by his mentor Benyamin, which ended him feasting and leaving bodies in his wake throughout Europe. He fed when and how he wanted to in a way no one noticed these days. If he did it correctly, no one died.
Unless he didn’t feel like being careful or if the monster rode him too hard.
A man could only take on so much when the nights were so long. So dark. So endless.
If he didn’t hurry her up, this Ms. Essence Welch would miss the train back to the city—she hadn’t pulled up in a car and was drenched enough to assume she’d walked from the train station. He would be stuck with her for the night. It wouldn’t do. He needed to feed, and it would seem Newton had volunteered by sticking his neck in Alec’s business once again
The man didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.
Ms. Essence Welch was a problem unto herself. She was beautiful, but he suspected she did not realize it. Lithe, graceful despite being soaked through, and lovely. She had blond hair, blue sparking eyes, and freckles over her nose. He usually preferred his women more voluptuous, or he had once. There had been no women since Constantia. His one true love. His only.
The little woman upstairs opened her door and travelled down the hallway. His friends would never believe he’d let her inside. The last two people to bring the papers had stayed on the porch the entire time. He didn’t like or trust humans, but it was hard to believe his data could be kept safe traveling over wireless networks.
His friends would laugh.
Alec found nothing funny. He never did.
His fangs threatened to descend, and he ignored the sensation. He’d been doing it so long, he hardly noticed. If he’d been alone, he wouldn’t have given it another thought. But he had a blood supply in the house, with her heart pumping his food and begging for his attention.